The demons of pride and self-will, defiance and scorn had been cast out. An ordeal such as few men are called upon to endure had purified, cleansed, and regenerated the drunkard. Friendship had taken the desperate man by the hand, plucked his feet from the morass, led him into the light and set his feet once more on firm ground. His profession was his again to follow. Love, real love, had come to him and folded her rose-white wings beside his hearth. Years of pure domestic happiness, of successful work, had passed, and now—the July sunshine had no warmth in it, though it streamed in through the open window over the tops of the pot-roses. The Dop Doctor’s head was bowed upon his hands, his great shoulders shook as though he strove with a mortal rigour, the wood of the table where his elbows leaned, the boards beneath the thick carpet on which his feet rested, creaked as the long shudders convulsed him at intervals. It had seemed to Saxham—in whom the seed of Faith had germinated and put forth leaves in one great night of storm following upon years of arid dryness—that Almighty God must have forgiven those five worse than wasted years. Fool! he now cried in his heart. The Divine Mercy is boundless as the ocean of air in which our planet swims, and for the cleansing of our spotted souls the Blood of the Redeemer flowed on Calvary. But He who said in His wrath that the sins of the fathers should be visited on the children, does not break, even for those repentant prodigals whom He has taken to His Heart again—the immutable laws of Nature. Nature, of all forces most conservative, wastes nothing, loses nothing, pardons nothing, avenges everything. The shouted curse, like the whispered blessing, is carried on the invisible wings of Air forever. Thus, the deformed limb, the devouring cancer, the loathsome ulcer, and the degrading vice, are perpetuated and reproduced as diligently and faithfully as the beautiful feature, the noble quality, the wit that charms, the genius that dominates. Nay, since Nature turns out some millions of fools to one Dante or Shakespeare or Molière or Cervantes, it would appear that she prefers the fools. So it is. Divine Grace has reached and saved the sinner. The ugly vice, the base appetite, have been eradicated by prayer and mortification, by years of self-control and watchfulness. Free will, moral and physical force, self-command and self-respect are yours again. And with sobs of gratitude the erstwhile slave of Hell gives thanks to Heaven.